Auction house Christie’s will be doing the Out of the Ordinary auction on 10th September and you will find pure treasures.

One of the sculptures that will be at auction that most capted our attention is a lacquered fibreglass sculpture entitled “Rocking Machine”. A controversial sculpture by Herman Makkink (1937-2013), from an edition of 6. measures- (41 cm.) high; (74.5 cm.) long

This shocking and strangely beautiful piece of pop art is one of an edition of six made in 1969, one of which made a memorable appearance in Kubrick’s masterpiece A Clockwork Orange (1971) in “cat women’s house”.

Rocking Machine was given as a gift to the vendor by Richard Lederer, head of Warner Brothers publicity department and a close friend of Stanley Kubrick. There are six in the edition of this 1969 sculpture, only one was actually borrowed for the infamous scene in Kubrick’s 1969 ‘A Clockwork Orange’. Another of this edition sold at Philips in New York in 2010 for $25,000. Despite not being the actual piece used in the film, the sculpture is a rare connection to A Clockwork Orange and memorabilia rarely comes to the market.

As outlined in the Film and Furniture guest feature Kubrick’s A Clockwork Orange: Brutalism in Exteriors, Interiors and a Quilt, Makkink explained that the sculptures “…formed part of my studio work at the time, and, after seeing them there, Kubrick wanted to use them for the film because they probably had the futuristic look he and his wife wanted. In the late sixties and early seventies, we, London-based artists, felt terribly hip. We didn’t want to fight the establishment so much as shock them. Pop Art was in full swing and so was the sexual revolution, so I combined a penis with a beautifully shaped female rear in fibre glass. I thought this would be really shocking. I thought I could make the object move by constructing a heavy pendulum swing inside. To my surprise I found that it made an irregular movement, so I exaggerated that by adding extra weights in various places. That resulted in Rocking Machine’s specific, jerky motion.”